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GOP battle plan: Pick your fights with Obama

Top GOP officials are calling for a more strategic mix of opposition and accommodation. | AP Photos

“The biggest impetus for Republicans here is that we’ve got to offer a big, bold, positive, optimistic alternative to the president’s agenda,” Walker said in an interview following his own speech at the National Review Institute conference. “Just being ‘no,’ just being a stopgap isn’t enough. People have got to see that there’s an alternative and that alternative is relevant to their lives. ”

Walker, who also may consider a White House bid, made clear who his advice was directed toward.

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“Having leaders [in Washington] who just object to everything, it becomes almost a knee-jerk reaction,” he said. “Where people go, ‘Oh, there they go again,’ versus ‘We’ll work with you on some things, but where you’re fundamentally wrong, that’s where we’re going to stand up and object.’ I think that’s much more powerful.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another potential 2016 candidate, has also warned against blind opposition toward Obama and, since last year’s election, been an outspoken voice for message reform within the GOP.

“If this election taught us anything it is that we will not win elections by simply pointing out the failures of the other side,” Jindal said Sunday at the National Review event. “We must boldly paint a picture of what America can be.”

The Louisianan has been particularly critical of the congressional GOP’s obsession with short-term fiscal fights and the jargon thereof.

“We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping,” Jindal lamented Sunday, reprising remarks he offered at a Republican National Committee meeting last week in Charlotte.

Jindal, like most ambitious Republicans, has kept much of his criticism focused more on presentation than on substance.

But Ryan ventured into policy over the weekend in what amounted to a mini-rollout from somebody who has largely kept quiet since the election. He defended his support of the fiscal cliff compromise — opposed by a majority of House Republicans — by stating bluntly that the economy would have taken a “nosedive” if it hadn’t passed. And he laid out the two-pronged approach he believes the party should take: “to mitigate bad policy — and to advance good policy wherever we can.”

What he didn’t say in front of the conservative crowd, but did the following day, was that one of those policies he’d like to advance is immigration reform.

Of all the issues Obama laid out in his inaugural address, immigration is the topic on which the most common ground with Republicans. Many in the congressional GOP, gripped with fear about their declining share of support from the country’s fastest-growing population, are anxious to support any sort of immigration legislation and deprive Democrats of the issue for future elections.

To get a sense for Republicans’ appetite for being a more cautious opposition, look no further than Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s embrace of immigration reform and the response to his proposal. It was an issue that Rubio, elected thanks to conservatives, handled gingerly in his first two years in the capital. But with the GOP’s crushing defeat among Hispanics in November and Rubio eyeing a bolstered résumé heading into 2016, the Cuban-American phenom has let go of his reservations and sought to become the Republican face of immigration reform.